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Seats of Power - Expansion Pack

Alright, today I've got some exciting news for those of you who still love playing DKII after all this time! Here I'm presenting you the DKII Expansion "Seats of Power", which will be released during the end of this year.

What this is

This is technically an Expansion Pack for DKII which gives the game a complete overhaul. It features completely new missions, skirmish maps and a reworked MPD mode, alongside with a new Balancing based on the patch by MGR. The lightning system has been updated to be much darker than in the normal DKII game and resembles DKI a lot more in this regard. New voice actors will be hired to record new lines for the campaign missions and a new extra soundtrack is a possibility.

All in all this is more like a completely new Dungeon Keeper game, using DKII as the basis it's built on.

The Campaign

The campaign will be different to what you are used from the official Dungeon Keeper games. The maps will be a lot more dynamic and will play out differently depending on your playstyle. Every mission features a lot of different Side Objectives you can obtain, but depending on the map, your Main Objectives might change drastically as well! This allows for a high replayabillity and an interesting experience every time you play a level. The Secret levels and the alternative versions for level 6, 11 and 15 will have fully fledged and different missions as well, adding to the amount of total maps you will be able to play.

The story mode will be more difficult than the standard DKII and will provide for a challenge, without actually being over the top difficult. Due to certain new features, the dungeon management aspect of the game will be more fleshed out and the fighting will be more tactical than before.

This campaign will mostly resolve around the story of three big Keeper leagues that are at war. This means that you will fight alongside multiple allies in the campaign, some of them who will even make re-appearances. The Keepers of every league have quite some different characteristics that define them, which will allow for more diverse Keeper battles. Later in the game you will be seeing three big houses of Heroes that are at war with each other as well. Each house will have special units only available to them, thus making them a more diverse enemy as well. More information on the leagues and houses will be revealed later on.

I'll say that much that the Keeper you play as (who will actually speak during missions now and be an actual character) is called Dionysus and that you are part of the Achaean League. The campaign is divided into three stages, which I will further elaborate on at a later point.

Skirmish Mode

The skirmish mode will be mostly the same as in the normal DKII version, but it will feature all new maps and a new type of map called the Versus mode, where all Keepers start with pre-built dungeons so you can go straight to the killing! Siege maps are also planned.

Multiplayer

I will not work on the Multiplayer maps until the Campaign is finished, but I will most likely include some modified Skirmish maps and Coop-versions of certain campaign levels once I get to it.

My Pet Dungeon

MPD mode will be changed to a certain extent. It will emphasize the exploration aspect of the game a bit more and will not feature a Hero tool box for every mission. This mode will also be connected to the main story, in that you are holding a certain realm under the control of your league that you will have to defend. It is still up to you when you want to trigger the attacks, but now you will not have Heroes as the ones doing the invading in every map. In some of them you might actually have to fend of incursions from enemy Keepers. Furthermore, due to the bigger scope of the MPD realms you might actually find allied Keepers in some of them.

New Features

Three new interesting features that were added will also play a big part in the campaign and MPD mode. Depending on how well you do and how efficiently you manage your dungeon, there is the possibility of a large scale rebellion happening inside your dungeon. Think along the lines of a civil war in the Total War series. Casino's will be a lot more useful, as they are able to keep the spirits of your army up and will prevent the outbreak of a rebellion. As will Guard Rooms, who give your creatures a sense of security, which will also bind them closer to you. However, if you absolutely fail on the battlefield time and time again, treat your creatures to cruelly and anger them or when you run out of gold to pay them, the risk of a rebellion happening increases. Other Keepers will also be able to suffer from rebellions, though the requirements for that are more map specific.

Another big addition is the new terrain type, the chasms. The chasms are unpassable for all but the flying creatures. The only way to get across them is by using stone bridges. However, the ability to do so is restricted exclusively to your enemies. You can build them in the new MPD mode though. Ranged units and traps can fire across chasms, but if any creature should accidentally fall into them, they will be irretrievably lost.

The third feature includes new Keeper spells. Some of them will appear again from time to time, if you defeat Keepers of a league who make use of a certain spell. Others, however, will only be available for one time and will be found by completing Side Objectives on certain levels.

Also, there is a big possibility that you might end up playing as a Purple and not a Red Keeper. The only real problem I'm facing right now are the sprites. So basically I have everything changed over aside from the creature and trap icons, which are still red for the Player. But if I was able to crack the Sprites somehow, there'd be nothing in the way of having a new Player color as well!

Finally, I replaced some of the silly random messages that you can get from the Mentor with some unused ones to make the game feel a bit more refreshing. The same old messages got boring after a while, so this should fix that, I think.

New Creatures

I can't technically add new units to the game, but I can change existing ones. There are two new unit types, one replaces the Monk and the other one the Thief. The replacement for the Monk is the High Priest, a boss type unit that acts as the Heroes' vampire to some extent. The High Priest utilizes a much stronger version of the drain spell. He still retains his healing and buffing abilities though, making him a really dangerous foe if he is protected by a group of other Heroes. At some point in the campaign, you might find a lesser version of him, called the Priest. He will not be as dangerous and a more conventional enemy. The Thief is replaced by the Sellsword, who is, as the name suggests, an excellent swordfighter. He is a little bit tougher than the Guard, but he has the ability to stun enemy creatures while in a melee and will make for a really dangerous foe in big groups. You will be able to hire him in certain missions or convert him in others.

Release-Date

I can't make any promises, but I plan to get this out at some point before winter 2015. The level 1-7 of the campaign are mostly done, as are a bunch of Skirmish maps, but it will take me a long time to get the remaining highly dynamic maps finished for the campaign. And I haven't even started with the MPD maps yet. After that I will also need to audition for voice actors, so I hope you can understand why this will take me quite some time to actually complete. However, I might put out a demo at some point, showcasing some of the different maps.Beta-Testing

I am still looking for a few more Beta testers, in order to get a better grip on the overall balancing and to eliminate all possible bugs before I ship this, so if you are willing to help me and have the time to test out some new maps for a couple of hours a week, send me a PM and I will add you the list of the testers. You will get early access to the maps and will be mentioned in the Credits of the game once it is done! All you need is a working 1.3 or 1.5 version of the game. 1.7 with the General Improvement Mod will also work.

Videos and Screenshots

I will basically post some preview stuff here, showcasing parts of missions or trailers. For now, you get a couple of screenshots and two videos. One shows the invasion of a hero castle from the last stage of the campaign while the other one is a trailer for one of the two versions of level 6. The version shown is called "War Pigs". Level 6 will be the first mission where you will actually start fighting alongside your default league allies.

Re: Seats of Power - Expansion Pack

Yeah, unfortunately I can't really do anything about the crashes. However, I will provide three versions of the Expansion pack, one for 1.3, 1.51 and GIM each. That way everyone should be able to play it with whatever version works best for him.

Edit: by the way, people who would volunteer for Beta testing could also use any of the three versions. The compatibility of each version is something I would need to test anyways, so that could also help with that I reckon.

Edit 2: I'll also provide some new screenshots soon. The lighting system has been updated and is a lot more like DKI now.

Re: Seats of Power - Expansion Pack

I released a new gameplay video of level 4, also introducing the new, reworked lighting system. As off now, either level 4 or 6b are the likely candidates to be released as a demo, so I will be presenting a bit more information about these levels as I update the thread. The name of this particular level is "Bad Moon Rising" and will have you face a rather powerful Keeper from your rivaling faction, the Arcadian League, who you and your allies are at war with at the beginning of the campaign.

Bad Moon Rising

A new feature has also been added. Instead of all the old ways to "recruit" new creatures and alongside the new Sellsword mechanic, I also added "Gateways" into the game, through which Keepers have access to Hero Units from the overworld. It'll be featured in a couple of story missions beginning with level 7, where it'll either be available to you should you be in a realm that has been subjugated by your league, or for enemy Keepers should they own the land. It'll also show up in a couple of MPD and Skirmish maps for that matter. They work somewhat different compared to the Portals, as in that you will only receive a limited number of troops from them, who arrive after certain time limits instead of when you have the room requirements. More details on the mechanics will be revealed as I refine the system.

I will also reveal some more details about the new Keeper spells soon-ish. So far I can tell you is that you will get access to a Keeper Freeze spell fairly early on in the campaign, which can already be seen in the footage of Bad Moon Rising. It is a really useful spell for disabling the more dangerous units on the enemy side for a short duration of time, allowing your creatures some breathing room in more difficult battles. It can only be cast on your own land and is a spell that you will frequently encounter while facing Arcadian Keepers, from whom you are almost always able to steal this spell from, provided you get their libraries somehow. On other levels it's available for research, which will mostly happen in the later phases of the campaign when the Arcadian League slowly fades out of the picture.

And that's pretty much all the news for this week. Updated screenshots might follow in the next couple of days.

Re: Seats of Power - Expansion Pack

Technically it would be possible for me to add the Maiden to the 1.7 version of the Expansion Pack as some sort of special units for Skirmish and MPD. I'd have to consult Rex on his ideas on the Maiden and how they'd work out with the current patch, but aside from that there's nothing that's stopping me from putting it into the game. If anything, it'd be something I could only add in further down the road, as I am creating the Expansion Pack in 1.3 and neither me, nor Decagon who mainly helps me with the testing of the maps, use any other version of DKII at this moment. After the base game is finished, optimized to the other versions and fully tested I could start looking at the additional stuff I can add in for the later versions.

Re: Seats of Power - Expansion Pack

Progress has been going rather slowly the last two months, but the first part of the campaign (roughly 1/3 of the missions) has been done by now. I'm waiting until Rex releases the next update for his Balancing Patch right now, so I can update all the maps and then move on to the next part of the campaign.

To you second question, yes, I'm still very much in need of some more beta testers. Especially now that the first couple of maps are more or less finished from a gameplay-standpoint. I've sent you a PM regarding your application, we can talk about the details of there.

As off now I'm still just doing closed-beta tests, but depending on how much progress I make until the end of the year, I might actually release a short demo version of the Expansion Pack, showcasing some of the finished campaign maps plus some Skirmish action.